Well 1BG can give you a ton of excuses but the main one is " I can't use the machines after work any more". Two other kids at work screwed up by fighting about toys (car puss and motorcycle wuss). Boss said NO more personal work period. All this went down about 8 months ago and Myself and a hand full of others got screwed cuz of the wuss & puss. I have a buddy that will let me use his machines but he has a business and it's super pain to to to over there and work around his schedule without taking advantage of his friendship. So I have two .500 barrel blanks, two 410 Saiga bolts and carriers (got em from Dinzag) , 100 NEW 338 Ultra Mag cases and a bunch of other parts in limbo. I have kept busy with some "normal" AK/RPK projects and hunting season is about to start. I'll be chasing birds next weekend. Noticed some of your projects on a couple of sites. I respect your being able to "Think outside the box mentality", understanding of mechanical principles and pride in quality workmanship.

Well 1BG can give you a ton of excuses but the main one is " I can't use the machines after work any more". Two other kids at work screwed up by fighting about toys (car puss and motorcycle wuss). Boss said NO more personal work period. All this went down about 8 months ago and Myself and a hand full of others got screwed cuz of the wuss & puss. I have a buddy that will let me use his machines but he has a business and it's super pain to to to over there and work around his schedule without taking advantage of his friendship. So I have two .500 barrel blanks, two 410 Saiga bolts and carriers (got em from Dinzag) , 100 NEW 338 Ultra Mag cases and a bunch of other parts in limbo. I have kept busy with some "normal" AK/RPK projects and hunting season is about to start. I'll be chasing birds next weekend. Noticed some of your projects on a couple of sites. I respect your being able to "Think outside the box mentality", understanding of mechanical principles and pride in quality workmanship.

Man that is a damm shame that a couple idiots wreaked it for every one. The 500 S&W you built was IMOO one of the most interesting builds I have seen on the boards. I have some machinery but My skills are not any were near profesional. I never have a enough tooling to do what I want. Im kicking around taking a machine shop cource at the trade colledge while im not working. I hear the head instructor is very pro gun. I have a 50 BMG barrel That Id like to build a reciver for but Im only going to do it if Im confident it temperd right and safe. I hope you find a way to carry on your projects as Im sure that wildcat would be a awsome build.

Brad sent me a couple of loaded Beowulf cartridges. I dropped everything to play with them.

They snap tightly into a 7.62 bolt. Good.

They can be forced into a military M-16 magazine, but the case mouth catches on the front of the magazine. You can force the cartridge out, but properly, either the lips need to be tweaked, or a bit of clearance needs to be ground into the front of the magazine. Alexander Arms' web site said the mags needed to be tweaked for the Beowulf, but a lot of people reported they'd had no trouble with unmodified mags. Variation between manufacturers, probably.

I just ordered a couple of G3 mags from CheaperThanDirt for 99 cents each, and an M-14 mag for $11.97. They didn't appear to have any FAL mags. From the pictures it looks like the M-14 mags might be easiest to work with.

The other option would be to cut the top off a 7.62 AK magazine and make my own mag body. I'll see how much worth it will take to adapt something else first, though.

They will fit into a 7.62 AK magazine, but they have exactly the same problem with the case mouth hitting the front; same solution, I suppose.

If you hold the follower down and get the angle just right, you can cram them into a 5.45 AK magazine. The lips need to be widened a lot. I also discovered the width between the lips is narrower than a 7.62; the 7.62 bolt is wider than the 5.45 lips, which means the 5.45 bolt is narrower across the bottom. You guys probably all knew that already.

I think I could get three, maybe four Beowulfs (Beowolves?) into a 10-round 7.62 magazine and they'd feed OK. For a 30-rounder, I might get a couple more, but the follower would be at a pretty sharp angle by then due to the curvature of the magazine. I bought the 5.45 mag because it was straighter than the 7.62; it looks like it would hold 7 or 8 rounds okay.

I'd planned on picking up a couple more 5/10 round mags anyway, so that's no problem.

For a larger mag, there's the magwell adapter fangle to use AR mags, or modifying 5.45 mags.

There's some clearance between the cartridge and the chamber, but that .005" would likely have made things sticky.

One web site says SAAMI specs are .008" for standard commercial chambers, which seems like an awful lot for those that headspace on the case mouth. Another site says .003" is common for custom target guns. I chickened out and wrote what I intended to use the gun for on my reamer order, and told them to pick what seemed appropriate.

miscellaneous rambling

My wife found me staring at the pile of magazines and wanted to know what I was doing. I explained the various problems and combinations, and she decided I should just use the AR mags as vz58 suggested. I objected that I didn't like the way they looked, with their weird kinked shape. She said they were cheap and the cartridge was designed to feed through them.

Well, spousal buy-in is worth something on any project. Looks like it'll be AR mags.

I knew someone made AR mag adapters. The AR mag I have is slightly longer front-to-back than an AK mag, which made me wonder how in heck they managed to make an adapter. Some googling showed a bunch of Galil-to-AR adapters. Maybe that's it. Looks like the simplest thing would be to bend up an AR-style magwell and weld it to the bottom of the receiver.

If I do that, I can use a simple bent piece of sheet metal for the trigger guard and an AR-type latch on the magwell. I don't need dimples in the receiver, nor do the rails need to help stabilize the mag, since the AR mag would be held straight by the magwell, and it's way narrower than an AK mag, so none of those parts would touch anyway.

miscellaneous rambling 2

I had a "duh" moment a while ago. (most people have "aha!" moments, I have "duh" moments...)

I'll need a longer gas tube to get the no-RSB Valmet look that I want. I was figuring I'd have to carefully remove the front handguard retainer, then cut the back off and weld on a section of plain tube. I couldn't think of any way to DIY a fluted tube.

The flutes are there to stabilize the gas piston while providing plenty of clearance for unburned powder, dirt, etc.

I remembered one of the features of the Galil, and sometimes mentioned for some Valmets, was the use of "fingers" on the gas piston, which was supposed to enhance its ability to deal with crud. I'd seen some pictures of those and wondered exactly WTF was going on, since the pictures didn't make much sense.

In a spurt of inspiration, I found some Valmet and Galil pictures. They use smooth gas tubes. The "fingers" on the gas piston perform the same function as the flutes.

Well, duh. You guys probably knew that all along...

This means I can use a piece of thinwall tubing between the gas block and the top block. I'm planning to dovetail the Yugo trunnion ears and make a "top block" to slide in, which will have the gas tube permanently attached like a Valmet. The top cover will slot into that, just like the RSB, and the spring retainer at the back will keep it all together.

The plan is also to put the rear sight at the back of the top cover. This means that during recoil, the back of the top cover is taking the load from the gas tube, top block, and rear sight. I've peered at a lot of pictures of Valmets and R5s, and I'd noticed some of them have screws holding the top covers in place, extra reinforcements across the back edges of the covers, or both.

I think I'm going to try an ordinary top cover and see what happens before I worry about it. If the cover bends, I can fangle a way to lock the top block/gas tube to the trunnion or gas block.

My father in law has a 50 beowulf ar upper. When he got it he started using the correct mags but realized the USGI 30rnd mags worked just fine also. He tried some of the cheaper mags and the sides swelled up slightly and didn't work as well. For deer hunting I made him a few magizine blocks to limit the mag to 5 rounds for deer hunting.